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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Ninjas and Tsunamis

The proverbial "they" say that grief and anger are commonplace in my particular situation. What they don't tell you is how sneaky those feelings are. One of my fellow widda friends coined it as ninja grief, and I think it is incredibly accurate. It sneaks up on you without warning and steals your breath away. Steals your sleep away. Steals your happiness away. your life away. As quickly and silently as it arrives, it departs; leaving no trace of what has come before. For me, it is not so much the grief that sneaks up on me, but the anger. The ninja anger sneaks up so suddenly that even I don't notice it sometimes. Other people notice though. Apparently it leaves a ghostly sadness about my person. I always look sad. Or angry. Or indifferent. Even behind my smiles and laughter people can sense that there is a shadow that hangs over me. I have never been an angry person. Ever. But now, the smallest things set me off.

I get angry when I think about how forgotten I feel.
How forgotten I feel B is.
How forgotten my kids must feel growing up without a dad.
How afraid I am that I am never going to be financially stable.
How very much not fair this whole thing is.
How alone I am.

"They" also say that grief comes in waves. I call bull on that one too. Well, sort of. Sure, it comes in waves. But not Gulf-of-Mexico-lap-at-your-ankles kind of waves. Not even normal oceanic waves. The kind of waves I'm talking about are full on tsunamis. Ones that start out with a little tremor, and end up devastating everything in its wake. The tremors can be anything...a song on the radio, a mannerism in your child that reminds you of your lost love, stumbling across a letter that they wrote you. Then the pain comes. That little ripple that you are unable to stop and you know it going to hit you. You sob. Gut wrenching uncontrollable sobs.

In the parking lot of the store where you had to pull over because you heard that song.
Slumped over the desk with the drawer open where he kept his cards and letters.
Curled up on your bed so the kids can't see or hear you.

Then it recedes. It takes a while, and what is left is not the same. It is a mess. You are a mess. Not a beautiful mess, but a muddy, mucky, debris strewn wreck that takes a while to clean up. There are people that help, people who volunteer to sweep up the debris, pick things up, and try to put them right again. But nothing ever goes back in the exact same spot. Nothing ever fits just right again.